Illegible
by Mnemosyne's Elegy
Summary: When Lucy rushes out of the guild in a hurry, accidentally leaving a note written in someone else's handwriting behind, Natsu fears the worst. The writing is totally unreadable, but there's something sinister about it and Natsu is worried his friend has gotten herself into trouble. Gray and the others are not helpful in solving the mystery.


**Note: Well, 2020 has been hell on earth so far despite my foolishly optimistic hopes, so I wrote something humorous to cheer me up. Enjoy it while it lasts lol It was supposed to go in "Words", but whatevs. I'll just write a new _"I"_.**

* * *

Natsu was the one who found the scrap of paper on the floor. Lucy had just rushed out of the guild a minute earlier, mumbling about needing to take care of something, and the paper was settled on the ground just beneath the bench she'd been sitting on. So _obviously_ Natsu was going to read it. Who would pass up an opportunity like that?

He leaned over to snatch the page from the ground and unfolded it.

"What do you have there?" Erza asked, raising an eyebrow.

Natsu frowned. "I…don't know, exactly. Lucy dropped it, but…"

"If she dropped it, do you really think you should be reading it?"

"Yeah, obviously you don't understand _boundaries_," Gray said a little snidely, the smirk coloring his voice.

"Shut up, dumbass," Natsu grumbled. "Like you're one to talk. But seriously…I'm _not_ reading it, because I _can't_."

"See?" Gray said. "I kept telling you all he was illiterate."

"Am not! Here, I'd like to see _you_ do any better."

Natsu thrust the note at Gray with a scowl. Gray squinted at it.

"What the hell?" he asked.

"Uh-huh."

The writing on the note was entirely illegible, just a mess of scribbles that hardly looked like writing at all. Even _doctors_ could write more neatly than that.

"That's not even her writing," Natsu said. "She writes way neater than that." A thought hit him and he straightened up. "You don't think…?"

"Don't think what?" Erza asked. She leaned over to look at the page over Gray's shoulder.

Natsu cast a worried look at the door Lucy had disappeared out of just a couple minutes before. "You don't think she's in trouble, do you?"

Everyone looked up from trying to decipher the mysterious missive to stare at him blankly.

"Trouble?" Happy repeated.

"Yeah. I mean, she left in a real hurry, and here's a note from a mysterious stranger. Do you think someone is threatening her?"

"Like blackmail?" Erza asked.

"Exactly!"

He leaned across the table to get another look. The page was torn in half none too neatly and then folded over itself the other way, and the writing was an angry snarl of black scratches. It looked vaguely threatening.

"I think blackmail would be more effective if you could read the demands," Erza said. "And this is totally unreadable. Maybe it's some kind of code."

"Code?" Happy repeated.

"Yes," Erza said, warming to her theme. "There's no way to read this normally, so all the different squiggles must stand for different things. I mean, it's not even proper writing."

"Code for what?" Natsu asked skeptically. "And who wrote it?"

Erza tapped her finger against her lips, brows furrowed in thought. Then her eyes lit up.

"Maybe she has a secret boyfriend?"

"Excuse me?" Natsu said, bristling. He didn't like the idea of Lucy having secret friends or boyfriends without telling the team.

"Yeah! And he's writing her love notes in the code he created just for them! How sweet! She was probably rushing out on a romantic tryst to meet up with him. Maybe he's going to take her to a bakery and buy her cake for them to share!"

"Tryst?" Natsu repeated. Who even talked like that besides…?

He exchanged a look with Happy.

"We need to raid her stash of trashy romance novels," Happy whispered a little too loudly.

Besides trashy romance novels.

Erza glared. "They are not trashy." She paused and flushed. "And I do _not_ read romance novels!"

"I still think she's in some kind of trouble," Natsu insisted. "Someone with handwriting that bad is up to no good."

"Guys, calm down," Gray said impatiently. He had been surprisingly quiet this whole time—given how hard it usually was to get him to shut up—and had been studying the writing intently while they argued. "Lucy wrote this."

"No way," said Natsu. "I've seen Lucy's writing. It's, like, _painfully_ neat."

The assertion itself irritated him, and not just because everything Gray said was irritating. He had seen plenty of Lucy's scribbles, and they looked nothing like that. She had the neatest writing of just about anyone he knew, with the possible, if surprising, exception of Gray. He resented being told he was wrong about something so obvious.

"Yeah, but she loops her _y_'s like this."

Natsu squinted at the chicken scratch critically. He could barely tell what was a _y_, much less if it was looped like one of Lucy's.

"Not buying it," he said.

"This is her _m_ and _f_ too. They're pretty distinctive."

Natsu was still skeptical, but Erza seemed impressed as she followed Gray's finger.

"Impressive," she said. "Who knew you were so good at deciphering handwriting?"

Gray rolled his eyes. "It's not a special talent. You just have to take the time to look at it instead of making up wild theories."

"Why is it so messy, then?" Natsu asked, unconvinced.

"She was probably in a hurry. Honestly, it's probably just a scrap of story or some notes for a plot or something that she jotted down as it came to her. She's always writing down bits of story here and there."

Which was true, except that Natsu had glimpsed some of those jotted notes and they still weren't anywhere near as illegible as this.

"Maybe she's learning shorthand!" Erza suggested. "That's practically a different language, and it seems like everyone who writes shorthand writes it messy. It would help her write all her story ideas down faster."

She was really stuck on that whole code thing.

"Or maybe she was writing something about the people who are threatening her," Natsu said. He squinted at the cramped lines of text. "I'm pretty sure it says 'dead' right there."

"No, I think maybe it's 'read'," Gray argued.

"Or 'bread'," said Erza.

"Okay, but what kind of story plot is about bread? At least 'read' makes more sense in context."

"Maybe she's writing about a character that runs a bakery."

"Not everything in life is about bakeries."

"Look!" Happy interrupted. "That says 'fish'!"

Gray heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Not everything is about fish, Happy. It could be 'finish'."

"Or 'kill'," said Natsu.

"Oh my gosh, that's not even close. She's not being kidnapped. Chill out."

The only thing they could all agree on was that the writing was totally illegible. They were still arguing over the finer points of the ransom note/story plot/secret code when Lucy herself came hurrying back into the guild.

"Oh!" she said. "You found my list."

They paused their bickering to stare at her.

"List?" Happy repeated.

"Yeah." She shook her head, looking a little frazzled. "Can you believe I got all the way to the grocery store before realizing I lost my list? Thanks for finding it."

She grabbed the page from Gray's hand and made as if to walk right back out of the guild, but there was no way she could just run back out after all the drama she had stirred up.

"Like a _shopping_ list?" Natsu demanded.

"Well, yes. Isn't that what I said?"

"Who the hell writes a list like that? Lists have bullet points."

Lucy gave him a scathing look. "What did you think commas were _for_?"

"And why is it so messy?"

"Because I was in a hurry? Why are you being so judgmental about how I write my grocery lists?"

Natsu opened his mouth, but caught Erza, Gray, and Happy shaking their heads violently from across the table. He hesitated. Maybe they had a point.

"Ah… No reason. Carry on."

Lucy rolled her eyes and stomped back out of the guild, muttering under her breath. The remainder of the team sat in silence for a moment.

Then Erza cleared her throat. "Let's never speak of this incident again," she said.

For the first time that morning, they were all in agreement.

* * *

**emmahoshi: Look, shopping _can _be a bit sinister XD Not usually quite that eventful, though.**


End file.
